Wednesday, February 08, 2006


The Road Not Taken

-Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

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Sorry, no anecdotes today. I had to submit something for a yearbook page, so I went with the above as it has always been one of my favorites. Not to go all "English Lit" on you, but it reminds me of the calm that comes after making a difficult decision. Even the smallest choices we make can put a kink in the pathway of our lives and lead us in a whole new direction.

2 comments:

Chris said...

This is one of my favorite poems as well.

Check out the entry I wrote in 1989 from something I observed while surfing. It later seemed very similar to Frost to me.

On The Easy Way.

Kate said...

Sorry Chris, I had to leave town for a few days... I can definitely see a "frosty" resemblance there, and I liked the imagery of the insects resigning and hurling towards imminent death. You put a lot of thought into a morning of surfing! I think it is always interesting and somewhat reassuring to observe the natural world and apply it to our own inner struggles.